Thomas Industrial Media and European Business Press have got together to launch a new French title, Electronique C&I (Electronique Composant & Instrumentation). This is the second title in the electronics sector that has been launched since the closure of EPN France and the merging of Electronique and Electronique International (following the launch of ElectronicSpecifier France).

The new title will be edited by Alain Dieul – previously the editor or EPN France – and has a promised circulation of 10070 print readers and 3510 digital readers, exceeding the circulation of the market leading title ElectroniqueS by about 1/3. We’re promised three issues this year – May/June, Sept/Oct and Nov/Dec, and the title should have a quarterly frequency in the future.

Of course there is also a publication website, although this has a somewhat different brand of www.electronicselect.com. The brand is builds upon Thomas’ other “select” site for the industrial market.

The rate card is very similar to that of ElectroniqueS, with pages coming in slightly cheaper, but ElectroniqueS generally offering lower cost for fractionals. Of course Electronique C&I will offer a lower cost-per-thousand by virtue of its larger circulation. At this stage, all online ads are offered in a simple RoS CPM basis (apart from welcome ads, of course), although as traffic builds I’d hope to see some more innovation.

It will be interesting to see how the editorial content develops, although the publication is likely to be clearly placed in the “product book” category. It’s interesting that – despite many predictions – product books are still clinging to life (and represent the majority of publications in France). Whilst I do believe that there is – and always will be – a value in having new product coverage, I’m not convinced that another product book in France is the right thing for the market. My concern is that the success of the product book is primarily down to the much lower editorial cost, rather than a desire to meet the needs of the readers, and it will be interesting to see if both ElectronicSpecifier France and Electronique C&I will prosper in the long term.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, electronicspecifier, Electronique C&I, ElectroniqueS, France

Having taken the unusual approach of launching a new publication without an editor in place (we are told they’ve had some freelance help), ElectronicSpecifier has announced the appointment of John Taylor as editor of their Digital Magazine.

John has a long history in the electronics industry, having previously been Editor of What’s new in Electronics and Managing Editor of Electronics Times, Editor of Electronics Manufacturing Products (EMP) and most recently freelance Editor of Electronics magazine. John has also had a spell working in PR, allowing him to see the industry from both sides of the fence.

With a circulation of 66,000 ElectronicSpecifier Digital Magazine has one of the largest distributions of any title in the European electronics media. It was also one of the first to make use of video content inside the publication. The appointment of a recognised editor is another step forward as this new title tries to disrupt the more established publications in our industry.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Editors, electronicspecifier, Online

2009 has been a dreadful year for publishers, and so I’m delighted that I’m going to end the year with a post about the launch of two new titles. ElectronicSpecifier will launch a monthly pan-European digital magazine in January and a French language title in February. There hasn’t been an announcement about a French website, but I’d confidently predict that unless the magazine is a failure, the site will follow fairly early in 2010.

Unsurprisingly both titles are planned to be “product books”, although I understand that the magazines will also include some industry news.

The launch of a pan-European digital title is easy to understand. ElectronicSpecifier has a strong pan-European list that will provide a circulation of more than 45,000 and a partnership with Hearst that could add another 20,000 readers. Their French list is just over 8500, which could increase to over 10,000 with Hearst’s data.  And of course once you have an editor for the website and a good database, the incremental cost of publishing a digital magazine is very low.

After the recent decisions by Reed and Groupe Tests that left the French market with just one magazine, the launch of a French title isn’t surprising. In fact I know of at least one other publisher with pretty advanced plans for a French print title.

The ElectronicSpecifier titles will use NxtBook as their technology platform. Although not quite matching Ceros, who I think is the industry leader in terms of the reader experience, NxtBook should provide a great platform for the magazines. Unsurprisingly multimedia adverts, including video, animation and sound will all be offered from the first issues.

I’m confident that these titles will prove successful. Firstly these titles are fundamentally low-cost, and I would expect advertising rates to be aggressive. The database has also proven itself to be effective, generating good open and response rates, even though the demographics are not as comprehensive as some other titles. And clearly the French title is entering a market desperate for more publications: in fact I’d say that this launch represents ElectronicSpecifier winning a race to announce a new French title.

ElectronicSpecifier has a clear advantage over digital versions of print titles: the magazine can be designed for on-screen reading and to work synergistically with the web. Replicating a print magazine digitally just doesn’t work, even on large high-resolution screens. Better layout will improve open rates: just look at the “designed for digital” Electronic Design Europe, which has outstanding open rates despite using a simple PDF format for distribution. We’ve not yet seen a product book specifically designed for digital, but I hope that ElectronicSpecifier have the confidence to get away from the format of product news in print titles. This format was designed to drive enquiries through the old bingo card system. In digital titles you just don’t need all the detail: if I’m looking for a product in a digital title all I need is a couple of sentences giving me the main facts about the product, and I’ll know immediately if I want to click through to the full story and datasheet.

I don’t, however, think that the recent flurry of digital titles means it’s all over for print – at least not yet. Open rates for digital titles are low, and few advertisers values a digital reader as highly as a print reader.

Over the next few years, however, e-book readers are going to improve dramatically from the pretty shambolic offerings that we have available in Europe. We’ll then have the standards fight – similar to Betamax against VHS. Eventually there will be one great e-book platform that frankly is better than carrying round a big pile of books and magazines. When this happens, the reading experience will be great, magazines will be delivered direct to your e-book reader, and open rates will rocket. It’s even possible that in the future a digital subscriber will be seen as more valuable than a print reader, although this is a long way off.

Tags: Advertising, Digital Magazines, Electronics, electronicspecifier, ESE, Europe, Online, Reed, Video

Electronic Specifier has launched a “Tech Videos” channel on their website, becoming the latest online publication to add short movies to its content. Although the site isn’t creating any videos itself, with the ever-increasing quality and quantity of videos produced by manufacturers and distributors, the site is unlikely to be short of content. Clearly video continues to be more and more important in our sector, and at Napier we’re working hard to help clients generate and promote online video. Next week I’m attending a showing of videos we’ve commissioned for a client that aim to show that it is possible to produce fun videos about electronics that have the potential to go viral: keep checking Napier News for more details of this project!

Tags: Clients, Electronics, electronicspecifier, Online, Video